How To Create a Hiring Process Flowchart (in 2024)
All businesses (and recruiters) are constantly looking to improve their recruitment process, but they must better understand it to do this. That’s where a hiring process flowchart can be very helpful.
Your people are your greatest asset, but attracting and retaining top talent is not easy, and includes many complex stages. Two in five HR leaders have said that accelerating their hiring process is a point of focus in their strategic hiring planning, and a hiring process flowchart is a valuable tool to help you achieve this.
This article explores what a hiring process flowchart is, why you should consider using one, and how to use this flowchart to improve recruitment efforts for your organization.
Contents
What is a hiring process?
What is a hiring process flowchart?
Why use a hiring process flowchart?
What are the steps in the recruitment process?
Types of hiring process flowcharts
Hiring process flowchart example
Using the hiring process flowchart
What is a hiring process?
A hiring process is the steps taken by a company to source, draw in, and recruit qualified candidates to fill open positions and be an asset to the business. The aim is to find candidates who align with the organization’s mission, values, and culture, and who also possess the skills, knowledge, and experience needed to excel in their roles and help the company meet its short and long-term business objectives.
The process begins once a position becomes vacant and ends when a candidate accepts an offer of employment or is onboarded. Typically, the HR department leads the hiring process and is primarily responsible for this.
What is a hiring process flowchart?
A hiring process flowchart (also known as a recruiting process flowchart), is a visual layout of an organization’s plan to attract and recruit the right talent. The flowchart will typically contain a mix of shapes, such as rectangles, ovals, and diamonds to represent different stages, with connection arrows illustrating the direction of the chart. Hiring process flowcharts are sometimes hand drawn, but more often computer drawn using Word, Canva, or a specific software.
The recruiting process flowchart is used by HR professionals to visualize their recruitment process, make adjustments, manage applicant tracking, streamline hiring and onboarding, and gain a clear overview of the entire hiring cycle.
Why use a hiring process flowchart?
- Clarity on the entire hiring process: A hiring process flowchart visually represents your entire recruitment process. This gives clarity to everyone involved, including their roles and responsibilities, and helps everyone stay on track. It can be particularly helpful in a presentation scenario as it removes the need for lengthy explanations and simplifies everything with shapes and symbols, which can also be more engaging.
- Helps to maintain consistency: A thoughtfully designed flowchart helps maintain a consistent hiring process and minimizes the risk of missing any important steps.
- Ensures you remain compliant: Different countries, states, and industries have different laws when it comes to recruitment practices. A hiring process flowchart helps ensure your process complies with these policies.
- Can reduce costs: Another advantage of a hiring process flowchart is that it helps HR to streamline their processes and potentially reduce recruitment costs.
What are the steps in the recruitment process?
Every recruitment process typically consists of a series of steps or stages that go from an open vacancy to onboarding a new employee. Here are the common steps that HR will work through:
Step 1: Planning and creating a job description
In this step, HR will often sit down with hiring managers of the department in question so they can better understand and analyze the requirements of the role and the candidate needed to fill it. This can depend on the short and long-term goals of the business, as well as any upcoming promotions or retirements within the department.
With this information, they can create an accurate job description, list the required skills and experience, and attract candidates who fit the role and the organization’s culture.
Step 2: Attracting candidates
The next step in the recruitment process is to source and attract top candidates who have the right mix of skills, qualifications, experience, and cultural fit for your company. The demographics of the candidates you’re hoping to attract will largely inform the strategies HR takes to source suitable candidates.
For example, if you’re looking to hire graduates for a graduate program, you might choose to attend college recruitment fairs or promote your company and vacancies on social media sites like Instagram. If you’re looking to hire for a more senior position, the candidate will generally be older, so you may choose to source candidates primarily through LinkedIn or a recruitment agency.
Presenting an attractive compensation and benefits package and demonstrating why a candidate would love to work for you is essential at this stage.
Step 3: Screening, interviewing, and selecting candidates
All candidates who apply for your open positions must then be screened, whether it’s through an online assessment or a telephone interview. Candidates who make it past this stage are usually invited for a formal interview, which could be a video interview or in-person.
In some cases, a job offer may follow this step. There will often be a final interview stage for more senior positions, where the successful candidates will be selected. In most interviews, there will usually be a representative from HR and the manager with whom the employee will work directly.
Step 4: Making a job offer
Candidates who successfully pass the final interview stage will then be offered a job. This will usually be done in person at the end of the interview or a few days later on the phone. If the candidate accepts the job offer, a formal contract will be sent through by HR for the employee to sign. More and more companies are sending job offers electronically these days to reduce paperwork and boost the speed of the hiring journey.
Step 5: Onboarding the new employee
The final step of the hiring process is to onboard the new employee. This stage plays a big part in the new employee’s first impression of the company, which is why creating an effective onboarding process is critical.
The goal of onboarding is to help the employee feel welcome and provide them with everything they need before their official first day of work. That might mean you send out any equipment they need, connect them with their manager, pair them up with a work buddy, set up their email address, give them information on all the benefits they’re entitled to, and more.
Onboarding doesn’t stop here. It continues through the employee’s first day, week, and even the first few months of their employment. HR will often schedule check-ins with new employees to see how they’re settling into their new roles and teams and be a point of contact for any questions or concerns.
Types of hiring process flowcharts
There are many different types of hiring process flowcharts, and each one has its own advantages and limitations. Let’s explore some of the most common types below.
1. Linear hiring process flowchart
A linear hiring process flowchart shows events sequentially, starting with the first step in the recruitment journey and ending with the final step. This is a popular flowchart because it helps to organize things in the order they occur, which helps you know where you are and the next step you need to take.
The limitation of this is that it doesn’t represent actions that may need to be repeated or circular workflows in the hiring journey.
2. Department-specific flowchart
A department-specific flowchart (sometimes termed a swimlane flowchart) helps to display multiple departments’ workflows in one place, side by side. This type of flowchart is helpful for showing the same process happening in multiple places and how they interact.
A department-specific flowchart can provide more clarity, however, if there are too many “lanes” it can quickly become over-complicated.
3. Parallel hiring process flowchart
A parallel hiring process flowchart is where tasks are broken down into smaller tasks to achieve the outcome at a faster pace. It shows multiple tasks occurring at the same time, performed by different people. For example, while HR is screening candidate’s resumes, a department manager might be putting together interview questions, or a task for the candidates to complete at home and present at the interview.
This type of flowchart shows how different people’s responsibilities take place simultaneously and creates a shorter hiring process.
4. Collaborative hiring process flowchart
A collaborative hiring process flowchart shows the involvement of other team members in helping hiring managers hire new employees. This can create a better experience for candidates and new employees, reduce bias in recruitment, and improve employer branding. The limitation of this flowchart is that it can lead to confusion as to who is ultimately responsible for each task.
HR tip
Design your hiring process flowchart to suit your particular organization, industry and unique set of goals.
Hiring process flowchart example
A hiring process example flowchart can provide solid inspiration and structure to inform your own flowchart. You’ll find many samples of flowcharts online, but here is a typical example of what a hiring process flowchart looks like.
Using the hiring process flowchart
Here are some tips to help you with your recruitment process mapping.
- Ensure you identify key stages and steps in your hiring journey. Break down the whole process into these smaller, key steps, so that you can visually see the pivotal parts of your recruitment journey.
- Keep it simple. The point of a hiring process flowchart is to simplify the recruitment journey and provide more clarity to everyone involved. So it’s important to keep it simple and not overcomplicate anything.
- Develop a standardized process that outlines all the steps to be followed for every vacancy. This will ensure that your recruitment efforts remain consistent regardless of the role in question.
- Write a detailed explanation and set of responsibilities for each step in your hiring flowchart. This will ensure that everyone involved understands their role and the responsibilities expected of them.
- Use the hiring process flowchart as a training tool for new HR personnel and hiring managers to help them understand the entire journey and their role.
- Give each step in the flowchart an estimated time it should take to complete as well as a deadline for completing it. This sets clear expectations and prevents delays and bottlenecks, which can create a negative experience for candidates and lead to you losing out on top talent.
- Define department responsibilities. If there are several departments involved in the hiring process (which is common in a larger organization), make sure the responsibilities of each department are clearly defined.
- Check compatibility. If you use any recruitment software (such as an ATS) in your hiring process, check that your flowchart is compatible with the system’s features and capabilities. If not, consider looking for new software.
- Use your flowchart to track and measure key metrics such as time-to-fill, cost-per-hire, and candidate quality. This data will help you better understand what’s working well in your recruitment process and what improvements need to be made.
- Don’t forget to ask for feedback from the HR team and hiring managers on the recruitment process. Different perspectives of all involved can help you refine the flowchart and the overall process.
- Tailor it to your organization’s specific needs and where you aim to grow. This includes your unique positions, departments, and business goals.
Key takeaway
A hiring process flowchart provides a clear, visual representation of your recruitment journey from start to finish and helps to maintain responsibility, consistency, and compliance. Customizing your flowchart to suit your organization’s needs and goals will help you refine your recruitment journey to attract, hire, and retain aligned candidates who thrive in your workplace.
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